Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
March 27, 1999, Saturday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 19
LENGTH: 622 words
HEADLINE:
NATION'S FIRST NUCLEAR DUMP OPENS FOR BUSINESS IN NEW MEXICO
BYLINE: The Associated Press
DATELINE: CARLSBAD, N.M.
BODY:
* The first truckload of radioactive waste arrives to the cheers of
plant workers and the protests of environmentalists.
After 25 years of
suits, studies and protests, the nation's first nuclear dump - a network of
chambers carved out of the salt beds deep beneath the New Mexico desert -
received its first truckload of radioactive waste Friday.
A crowd of
about 100 people who live in Carlsbad, 25 miles from the Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant, cheered the truck and held up cardboard signs reading, "Welcome finally"
and "It's about time!" as the rig rolled through before daybreak.
Earlier in the 270-mile, 7 1/2-hour trip, the truck faced a scattering
of protesters yelling "Poison! Poison!" along with two young women who sat down
in the road and a man who tried to block the highway with his car. The first
load of waste came from Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is in the New
Mexico city that was the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
Ultimately, up
to 6.2 million cubic feet of waste generated since the dawn of the atomic age
will be entombed over the next 30 years in the salt beds nearly a half-mile
below ground. The waste consists of such items as clothing, tools and rags
contaminated with plutonium.
Up to now, the United States has had no
permanent resting place for weapons-related plutonium waste.
As a
result, the waste has been piling up at 23 weapons installations around the
country, such as Rocky Flats near Denver and the Idaho National Engineering
Laboratory, where it is kept mostly in 55-gallon drums on above-ground concrete
pads, underneath bubble structures or in earthen mounds.
These corroding
drums must be periodically repackaged, and some fear the waste is vulnerable to
hazards such as tornadoes or earthquakes.
The arrival of the first
shipment of waste at the site marked more than two decades of effort to open the
$ 1.8 billion repository, first proposed in 1974. The first truckload is
scheduled to be placed underground by Monday.
"I'm ecstatic - this is
just the culmination of everything I've worked for for 25 years," said Wendell
Weart, a Sandia National Laboratories scientist who was instrumental in creating
the repository.
The waste plant is not designed for the thousands of
tons of high-level waste stored at nuclear power plants across the country.
Yucca Mountain in Nevada is being studied as a long-term burial
place for that waste.
An appeals court in Washington and a federal judge
in Santa Fe on Wednesday rejected last-ditch appeals from environmentalists who
sought to stop the transfer of the waste.
On Thursday night, a crowd of
about 100 people cheered and the driver gave a thumbs-up as the load rolled out
of Los Alamos National Laboratory, its departure delayed by heavy fog.
But down the road in Santa Fe, N.M., a hub of anti-waste plant
sentiment, dozens of protesters lined the route, holding up placards that read
"Stop Nuke Trucks" and "Science or Science Fiction?"
William Beems, 42,
of Albuquerque, N.M., parked his car across the middle of the road with lighted
flares around it. He was arrested on charges of obstructing the road and
resisting arrest.
The two young women who sat down on the interstate
south of Santa Fe moved when asked to do so by state police.
The
18-wheeler carrying three huge steel containers bearing the black-and-yellow
radiation symbol passed through the plant's white metal gates at 3:36 a.m. to
the cheers of about 500 employees and dignitaries. Plant employees waved
American flags and jumped up and down.
"I never had a doubt it would
happen - I just didn't know when," said Shari Cullum, who works in the
accounting department. "I had a big lump in my throat. This is cool."
LOAD-DATE: July 8, 1999 
